"Sharing memories"

Fritz Muliar talks to Luxembourg schoolchildren about National Socialism and totalitarianism as a contribution to Austria’s chair of ITF

Luxembourg, 17 November 2008 - The well-known Austrian actor Fritz Muliar seized the opportunity to make a guest performance in Luxembourg to discuss his experiences in Nazi Austria and resistance against totalitarianism and the extreme right with Luxembourg schoolchildren. The event, which was broadcast by the Luxembourg school TV channel "Uelzecht-Kanal", took place at the documentation centre of Luxembourg’s resistance movement.

Muliar was placed in solitary confinement in 1942 for "undermining the military forces" and activities aimed at the re-establishment of a free Austria. His death sentence was converted to long imprisonment and, finally, to "service on the front" in a penal unit on the eastern front. As a contemporary witness, he offered the students an insight into the moral and practical challenge posed by resistance against a totalitarian regime.

During the Second World War, Luxembourg, itself occupied by German troops on 10 May 1940 and subjected to German military administration, was exposed to a policy of targeted Germanisation. The situation of the country in those years was characterised by forced recruitment into the German Wehrmacht, the deportation of Luxembourg’s Jews and a revival of Luxembourg’s national consciousness.

The event, which was organised by the Austrian Embassy in Luxembourg, forms part of Austria’s activities as chair of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. The objective of the group, which meanwhile comprises 25 states, is to achieve the broadest possible public support for education, remembrance and research about the holocaust.